*

So my friend, the girl, and I walk through the store together, talking about random things, looking at jewelry (the girl found a pair of Vera Wang earrings and wistfully commented that they looked like dying stars and that her brother would love them) and socks. Meanwhile, we start to notice people around us are glued to their phones. One lady has her hand over her mouth in horror, tears streaming down her face. Kohl’s seems an awfully lot more empty than it had been. The girl brightly suggests we look in homewares.

We go to the back of the store and start smelling all the Yankee Candles, and the girl is like, “People can be so creative. Vanilla lime? Genius! I’m going to miss this.” My friend asks if she’s going on a trip and the girl is nonchalant, like, “Things will be changing for me real soon and I’m not going to be able to enjoy things like candles anymore.” My friend wishes her all the best with whatever and I say we’ll buy her the candle so she has something to remember us by, and the girl is all, “You both are very kind. I won’t forget that, I promise.”

So we go to check out, but no one’s there. So we wait and wait, and then the girl shrugs, takes the candle and the Vera Wang earrings, and goes to leave. My friend and I are mortified, crying that she has to pay for them, and the girl is like, “I doubt they’ll mind,” as she leaves. Then my friend notices the store is completely empty and takes out her phone, which is blinking with dozens of missed calls, texts, and alerts.

She opens one of the alerts and it takes her to a breaking news video. All over the world, there is chaos. Horrifying things are devouring people and destroying cities. A giant cube of sand with teeth and weird proboscises on every side is sucking up people in Rio, and a slow-moving slender titan made of clouds is walking through San Fransisco and leaving nothing in its wake. Off the coast of Japan, something is rising from the ocean but the video cuts out.

Terrified, we run out of Kohl’s and find the girl standing at the curb. She’s staring at the sky over Route 1 as a giant, shifting mass of black mist descends. The girl turns to us, smiles, and says, “That’s my brother. Thank you for a lovely day of shopping. I’ll never forget it.”

Then the skin of her face and neck begins to crack and flake away, revealing fault lines of indescribable things underneath. My friend starts to weep. I manage to get out through chattering teeth that I hope her brother likes the earrings, and the girl–barely human now–smiles with the remnants of a million devoured suns and says, “You know, if everyone had been as nice as you two, we wouldn’t have come to this.”

And then she squared herself exponentially and swallowed everything up.

The comedy in the show came from the family’s “odd” lifestyle, rather than from infighting and petty bickering, or worse, as was common on other shows of the time, thinly veiled references to spousal abuse. They didn’t make fun of each other or act like their children were creatures from another world. Were they strange and outside of social norms? Yes. Were they united in creating a loving home and being good, supportive parents? Absolutely.

These two support and adore their children, care for an aging mother and an estranged brother, put family before everything, and they love each other, wholly, fiercely, without reserve. They are every bit as much in love after at least a decade of marriage as they were the day they met.

It’s nobody’s surprise that many of the aesthetic and thematic elements of The Addams Family in its various incarnations are influenced by Gothic tradition (not goth, that mostly came later. And not Goth, that was much much much too early), and I think Gomez’s words are a dead bullseye in terms of Gothic mentality.

“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”

The sublime is a recurring theme throughout Gothic literature. Although the word (like “awesome”) has lost a lot of it’s original luster over the intervening decades, sublime doesn’t really mean elevated and lofty (or even heavenly) as it’s often used today, but rather something possessing the power and grandeur to induce awe and veneration in the mind of the beholder. Although less than divine, something sublime possessed a wildness and power that transcended human ability to control…or even to comprehend.

Sublime is standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon leaning as far as you dare over the railing and still not being able to see the canyon floor below. Sublime is warrior-queen Galadriel being tempted by the One Ring. Sublime is waking up in the middle of the night in the heart of a wild thunderstorm.

“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”

Gomez isn’t advising Fester to treat a woman he fancies like a princess, or even elevate her to pedestal of angelic nature (who’s idea was it to equate femininity with purity anyway? What a laughable and historically damaging idea. Shame on whatever dead (probably) white dudes promoted that!)

Gomez is advising Fester that if he truly loves a woman he must do everything he can to remind her of how she’s an untameable force of nature who’s grandeur brings him to his knees in awe and terror. Just like Morticia, for Gomez.

I’ll sign off with one of my most favorite quotes of all time, because it feels suddenly very relevant:

“When I find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I feel as if I am the eye of a hurricane.”